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Top KPK investigator blames police detective chief in court
Novel Baswedan - JP/Wendra AjistyatamaCorruption Eradication Commission (KPK) top investigator Novel Baswedan has accused National Policeâs Detective Corps chief Comr
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Novel Baswedan - JP/Wendra Ajistyatama
Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) top investigator Novel Baswedan has accused National Police's Detective Corps chief Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso of an abuse of power for arresting him for personal reasons.
During the first hearing at the South Jakarta District Court on Friday of a pretrial petition filed by the former police officer, Novel and his team of lawyers insisted that Budi Waseso had personally intervened in Novel's case.
'A letter issued by the National Police's detective corps chief on April 20 was written down in the arrest warrant as one of the bases of Novel Baswedan's arrest,' one of Novel's lawyers, Febi Yonesta, told sole judge Zuhairi during the hearing.
'This shows that the detective corps chief has intervened in the investigators' authority following a chain of events that did not indicate any urgency to arrest Novel Baswedan,' the lawyer added.
Due to the many alleged violations by the investigators, Novel demanded that the National Police conduct an internal audit on the performance of those handling his case, along with a public apology in the form of a banner to be hung outside the police headquarters in South Jakarta.
The three-star police general had defied the orders of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, and later also denied the instruction of National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti to release Novel because he was too eager to put the KPK investigator behind bars, said Febi.
Novel was arrested at his home late at night on May 1, in connection with an assault case that is over a decade old, which allegedly occurred while he was the Bengkulu Police detective chief.
After a 10-hour interrogation at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta, Novel, who was handcuffed and ordered to wear a detainee's jacket, was transferred to the police's Mobile Brigade (Brimob) headquarters for further questioning.
The grandson of independence fighter Abdul Rahman Baswedan was only released after intense lobbying by KPK leaders who guaranteed that the antigraft body's top investigator would not flee before his trial.
In 2012, then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered the police to drop the case against Novel, who was targeted by members of the force following the antigraft body's decision to name then head of the National Police Traffic Corps (Korlantas), Insp. Gen. Djoko Susilo, a graft suspect.
The National Police reopened the case in March this year in the midst of a standoff between the KPK and the National Police after the antigraft body named then former National Police chief candidate Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, a close acquaintance of Waseso, a bribery suspect in January.
Novel's team of lawyers also claimed that police investigators presented him with an arrest warrant signed by the police force's director of general crimes, Brig. Gen. Herry Prastowo, dated April 24 and slated to expire after 24 hours as stipulated by Article 19 of the Criminal Code (KUHP).
Meanwhile, Novel himself said that he pursued a pretrial hearing in order to make the police force amend its ways.
'The KPK leaders requested that I wait until the situation 'cools down' but after mulling it over, I thought it was best to go through a legal process not only to compensate for my losses but also due to my concerns about law enforcement, in this case the police force,' he said.
The judge adjourned the hearing until next week because the National Police asked for more time to prepare a response.
However, police representative Joel Baner Toendan rejected the accusations and said that investigators had followed the KUHP, adding that Waseso did not influence their decision to arrest Novel.
